Thanks for the group pictures guys. I unfortunately didn't meet onn either, which is a shame.

Mel was just as "there" as the rest of us. I did the tour with him. He was on the dock all night! He's just very quiet and unassuming. He probably makes a living off of blackmail. How'd you think he can have EVERYTHING in high gloss rosewood!

He was wearing Al Bundy's shoes with toes. The idea came to him in a vision from God. (Bundy, not Mel.)

Given the camaraderie of the weekend, I think it only fair that we band together and help chess fill in the major memory gaps he is experiencing. But please - speak softly.

I'm not going to be any help. I don't remember anything after dancing with Amie. My sister told me that I had to be pushed into our cottage. Mind you, it's not uncommon for me to require someone to push my chair around when I've been inebriated .

Chess is my hero.

_________________________
The only reasonable argument for owning a gun is to protect yourself from the police.

So for those of you who hadn't heard the M-80v3 model before your party, how'd they sound compared to the v2 model?

To be honest, I'd really have to do a comparison of the two in the same room. With John's setup, the v3's were amazingly smooth. My first impression was that they sounded cleaner than my v2's, but our rooms couldn't be more different.

Obviously not a big help to you, but maybe others can chime in on the sonic differences.

Scott

Scott nailed it. Cleaner and smoother is the best way I can describe it. Seems to extract more detail.

OMG...chess was hilarious! Did he drink too much of Murph's moonshine? I had a few sips of a "weak" drink, according to Murph. It actually went down fairly smooth, but I was too paranoid to drink it all. However, I think what I DID drink of it boosted me slightly over the edge. Let's just say, it's good that I left the party when I did!

I finally have made it back to my lair. Slowly reading the posts and looking at all the pictures from the weekend. Having huge chuckles as I try to clarify to my spouse Nancy, just what was transpiring at the particular time the photo was taken - my memory has a slight lag as well.

I've got to say that the weekend experience with you all was incredible - the Axiom family is in very good hands. Your kind words and complimentary nature were much appreciated.

Saturday was a LOT of fun. The three round tables were excellent. I was fascinated by the discussion on the design of the VP 180. Long story short, measurements (a whole family of them) are important, but in the end, the ears have it. Axiom does blind listening tests on everything they develop and for the VP 180 it was a non-traditional design that ended up sounding the best.

The other interesting thing that came out is that Ian still feels there is a lot to learn in the audio field. There is lots out there that we don't know and that seems to excite the folks at Axiom.

The plant tour was cool. I've been through once before and I'm still impressed by those big CNC machines they use to cut all the cabinets. I'm surprised nobody else posted about the creepy anechoic chamber because being inside one of those is, well, just creepy.

One thing I noticed this time around is that everyone at Axiom has a very well developed sense of humor. I asked Alan if they had a 'sense of humor' section in their interview process.

The REAL Main Event

The dock party was amazingly awesomely good: great food, great people, live band, lots of excellent beverages. I hear the moonshine Murph brought was pretty good. I write 'heard', because apparently you needed to get to it before Chess did.

The band was really, really good. They played a range of covers and a bunch of their own stuff. Best song of the night: I Hate Winnipeg.

The pictures cover the event pretty well.

After the Party.

Being so close I stuck around Sunday for some more R&R. Murph was there for a seminar on Tuesday so we played a round of golf at North Granite Ridge, another very nice course. The weather was dicey in the morning with lots of cloud and some showers, but it cleared up nicely and we had sunshine for the back nine.

We grabbed a very late lunch at the docks before I headed back home.

You would think that 3 days would be plenty of time to spend time with everyone, but I feel like it would have taken another three days to do that.

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Fred

-------Blujays1: Spending Fred's money one bottle at a time, no two... Oh crap!